Damon Lindelof Exits 2025 Star Wars Film, New Writer(s) Taking His Place; Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Remains Attached as Director

I'm not surprised... stop announcing new Star Wars films please (I was really looking forward to Kevin Feige's Star Wars film, and before that Benioff and Weiss, the Game of Thrones showrunners take as well). I was looking forward to Lindelof's take on Star Wars since his take on the Watchmen's HBO series was a breath of fresh air, it wasn't what I had expected a Watchmen tale to be, and I think he would have done the same in this franchise.

Lindenof also had issues with the Alien franchise, director Ridley Scott changed Lindenof's story/concepts drastically from what Lindenof had in mind, and it shows with the final product, Prometheus, so whatever Lindenof was planning on, will not be executed as he had originally imagined... what a loss and a shame.

Star Wars films are supposed to be released every ten years, (TROS 2019) so maybe they'll get their act together by 2030. I'm not counting on a 2025 release and if they make it, I expect it to be sort of lackluster to say the least.

 

I wonder why filmmakers are frightened that their best work won't be unanimously or generally well received by the Star Wars audience.....

 

If they take another four years to produce something everyone at LFL feels confident of releasing, it will still be the quickest theatrical turn around since the end of a trilogy cycle in SW history. And that last cycle included two additional films. Five in four years. We had six in twenty eight prior to this.

 

While this is all correct, I don’t really get the point? It isn’t as if LFL planned on a long drought in-between films, had everything gone to plan the first post-TROS film would be coming out in December of this year. George didn't spend the mid-late 80's into the early 90's announcing new films only to then scrap them or have them undergo major changes in production. Since October of 2017, they've announced a Rian Johnson series of films which is on indefinite hold, a David Benioff and Dan Weiss film that has been cancelled, a Patty Jenkins film which has been cancelled, the Damon Lindelof film has undergone major changes before even officially being announced, and a Taikia Waititi film which has made very little progress since being announced almost three years ago. It might very well end up being the quickest turnaround, but there are obvious and justifiable reasons to be upset with the way things have gone.

 

Only if you measure your chances of enjoyment and happiness by LFL/Disney keeping an implied (debatable) promise to deliver by a certain deadline. I just don't feel that way and don't relate to the way others see it as failure to meet obligations. I'm also conscious of the factors, including that of SW fatigue, that plagued the release and reception of the thoroughly worthy Solo (a SW film that is perhaps miraculously better than it should be in spite of the circumstances). Plus there are plenty of SW projects on Disney+. There's more ways to scratch that itch than ever before.

I understand that yearning to have another positive theatrical experience. But I also accept the difficulties faced by those committed to ensuring that experience IS positive for as many people as possible, rather than just expediting it with most haste.

 

This news could be something, but it might also be absolutely nothing. A cycling through of writers and producers etc. on major movie production is a very common occurrence. As an example, every single movie that Lindelof has writing credits on lists other writers besides him, too.

This could be as simple as Lindelof not being allowed to do the story he wants to do for story-consistency/legacy protection reasons (=something like, say, cloning Darth Vader, or whatever), or perhaps he's cranky over not getting as much creative freedom as his buddy JJ got with the ST.

Of course, there could be structural LFL problems at play here -- and we all know that the hate brigade are going to march in goose steps over this news -- but we do not know that this is the case. There could be a myriad of reasons for Lindelof pulling out and making cryptic and somewhat pissy statements in the press; heck, for all we know, he might be dreading having to interact with vile SW "fans" and decided to abandon ship before he has to deal with the mobs. Again, we simply do not know.

 

But not surprised anymore.

 

This project has never been announced and officially they've said very little about what their doing with films the past couple of years.

I guess Lindelof could be the Michael Arnd to this new film. I'm encouraged that they're really trying to get this next film right. Like I've said, this is probably the most important Star Wars film made by Disney. For them to kick off a new series of films this one really needs to work.

This is my nightmare scenario. The priority for films should be to make something great. Leave the experimentation to TV.

 

I'm not privy to ANYTHING in the LFL/Disney world -- contracts, legalese, etc. -- but I'm going to naively throw this out: Is there a point where LFL reaches out to Lucas and asks, "Can you give us a little guidance here?" I mean, they don't seem to be able to figure out exactly what the next theatrical iteration of SW should be ... or at least they haven't found the right people to steer it. I don't know what Iger and Lucas' relationship is at this point, but maybe just a simple sit-down with the big guy could provide some clarity or guidance.

 

I'll flip this around. If your Iger, what film project has Lucas created in the last 30 years that was received well by critics and audiences alike that was also a box office smash? Just off the top of my head Last Crusade is probably the last one. That was a long time ago.

 

I'm not asking them to get GL to write or produce or direct anything ... just a convo to see where he thinks the next move could be. He's a visionary that created this whole franchise. Who better to get input from?

 

I kind of assume that's happening anyway. His hand picked person is running Lucasfilm and his understudy (Filoni) is the Executive Creative Director who has been rumored to be involved in what is being developed.

 

The last SW movie Lucas pitched was a Han Solo origin story (yeah, that was originally a Lucas idea). That project lost LFL loads of money and it turned out the second-most hated movie in the franchise by fans. With that, and the mediclorian deep-dive movie plans in mind, I seriously doubt that LFL are all that interested in pursuing any more Lucas ideas in the near future, except, theoretically, as a way to service the worst of the fanbase.

(For the record: S:ASWS is my 3rd favorite SW movie, and TLJ my 1st. Still, people hates them to the degree of bullying and death threats).

 

I don't think that's the only instance where it's fair to be upset. I'm not clamoring for a new film, I'm still well satisfied with the sequel trilogy and there's a lot of D+ content I still have to catch up on, but if we both agree that it's obviously best to do things the right way and not the quick way, surely the right way doesn't consist of announcing multiple projects only to then scrap them a few years down the line. The problem is much bigger than simply missing deadlines which is common for every studio. You use Solo as an example but I'm not entirely sure that works, it isn't like they announced all these things, then Solo came out and underperformed, and then they realized they needed to switch strategies. If anything, this is the response to their previous strategy where they were going to release anthology films quite frequently. With the exception of Rian's film series, all of these things were announced in a post-Solo world and a world where "Star Wars fatigue" had already become a pretty big topic of conversation. While I can't and won't definitively say they aren't taking those factors into account, there isn't much, if any public evidence to support that they are. From the outside it just looks like a very sloppily run shop.

 

But there are no deadlines. And there have been no announcements except that Lucasfilm are paying certain people for their time to develop potential movies for production. Since it is virtually impossible to keep these things under wraps these days.

 

I do find it interesting (and a bit comical) that they've been having such a hard time getting the next Star Wars film off the ground. Especially when you compare it to how much success they've been having on the TV/streaming front and how much content we've been getting on there lately. I do wonder what the hold-up for the next film is. Hopefully, as DailyPlunge said, it's because they're really trying to get it right.

I'm fine with this news personally, largely because we do have the TV shows to sate us right now. I still hope we get another film eventually (which I'm sure we will). But for now, yeah, I feel it's best if they take the time they need to do a good job.

 

One reason here is because TV is magnitudes easier to pull off; TV is cheaper, smaller, and more long-form. A badly received episode of a TV series doesn't cost the company much and doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things; a badly received 30 minutes of an expensive and highly anticipated film can tank an entire movie studio (and has a few times in the past).

The complexity and risk of making high end movies cannot be compared to that of making TV shows.